ALISTAIR Coe says the Victorian Labor Government has set an important precedent for cancelling any contract signed by ACT Labor regarding light rail.

“Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews today announced that the signed contracts with the successful East West Link Consortium would be cancelled with a 3 percent penalty of the total contract price,” Alisair said.

“The announcement today includes that compensation for lost revenue will not be paid to the consortium.

“In the event that Andrew Barr and Simon Corbell sign a contract with a consortium regarding light rail, the Victorian decision provides an important precedent for cancelling such contracts.

“However, the Canberra Liberals will be doing all we can to stop the ACT Government from entering a contract to construct light rail.

“The issue of light rail should be determined at the 2016 Election and as such, the Labor government should hold off on any contracts until the voters of Canberra have had their say on this $783,000,000 proposal,” Mr Coe concluded.

A bit of digging in the Internet Archive does, however, bring up Labor’s 2012 policy for Capital Metro which begs the question of how many elections a policy needs to be taken to before a Liberal Government will honour contracts?

Dated October 12 2012 the policy states:

ACT Labor’s commitment to transforming our public transport system started with its policy announcement that if re-elected ACT Labor will establish the ACT’s first large-scale private sector partnership to plan, finance and develop the first stage of a light rail network for Canberra – Capital Metro.

Capital Metro, which will be the backbone of Canberra’s public transport network, will be integral to the ongoing success of ACTION’s Frequent Network. It is a transformative project that will change the face of Canberra and the way it functions and grows.